Women Have Faces

I now find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Straw’s every word. Feminists have denounced Straw’s approach as unacceptably proscriptive, and reactionary Muslims say it is Islamaphobic.

Not this feminist. (See? This is why the word ‘some’ comes in handy. It’s similar when people over there get going on the subject of Americans. ‘Americans love sentimental movies, Americans are religious fundamentalists, Americans are fat, Americans mispronounce “Victoriar and Albert”.’ Not all of us, except for the last one: we all do make that mistake.) This feminist has not denounced Straw’s approach as unacceptably proscriptive; instead I’ve wished he hadn’t skated over the feminist issues.

But it is time to speak out against this objectionable garment and face down the obscurantists who endlessly bait and intimidate the state by making demands that violate its fundamental principles. That they have brainwashed young women, born free, to seek self-subjugation breaks my heart.

Britain has been both more relaxed about cultural differences and over-anxious about challenging unacceptable practices. Few Britons have realized that the hijab — now more widespread than ever — is, for Islamicist puritans, the first step on a path leading to the burqa, where even the eyes are gauzed over…I refuse to submit to the hijab or to an opaque, black shroud. On Sept. 10, 2001, I wrote a column in the Independent newspaper condemning the Taliban for using violence to force Afghan women into the burqa. It is happening again. In Iran, educated women who fail some sort of veil test are being imprisoned by their oppressors. Saudi women under their body sheets long to show themselves and share the world equally with men. Exiles who fled such practices to seek refuge in Europe now find the evil is following them…Millions of progressive Muslims want to halt this Islamicist project to take us back to the Dark Ages. Straw is right to start a debate about what we wear.

Don’t read the comments on this unless you want to feel sick. The Independent article has gone subscription, so I used this one, but the comments are…nasty.

17 Responses to “Women Have Faces”

I was a bit surprised that there was such an uproar about Straw’s remark, which seem very moderate to me. A while ago, there was a move (succesful if I recall) on the part of the Free University of Amsterdam to ban the burqa and the niqaab in the classroom. I totally agreed – not only because I find the thing itself objectionable, but also because teaching is already difficult enough if you CAN see your student’s facial expression.

Just on a technical point (which Y A-B would not be in a particularly good position to know; she’s a middle class East African Indian), the wearing of veils is not a politically Islamist position. The female members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood don’t in general, wear veils (as anyone can see from the pictures of Shabina Begum, not wearing a veil).

I cannot but attack that mantra of yours again. Yes, Islam is a religion. But religions are complex things. They include knowledge claims (God exists and is/does …) which may be more or less philosophically well-founded or alternatively faith-based. They are also means of social control and of upholding social cohesion. Which in many societies includes oppression of women.

The whole “religion is (insert bad thing here)” and “religion does (insert bad thing here)” is a bit simplistic, to say the least. Not in the least because the way religion may or may not be intertwined with secular power is a bit more subtle than that.

And because “Islam” is not a monolith. Which should be clear enough as Yasmin Alibhai Brown, and other critics of Islam such as Irshad Manji, consider themselves muslims. There are also groups like the Alevis in Turkey, who have been very active in secular leftist movements and have seen serious oppression for this reason. Many of the more liberal groups are Shi’a, which as the responses on the site OB linked to make clear, are considered heathens by more traditional Sunni muslims – and have been a prime target for massacres such as perpetrated in Iraq.

Look, you believe that the proposition “God exists” is nonsense, which is fair enough with me. But neither you, nor Dawkins, nor anyone else can support the claim that violence against women or terrorist actions are a necessary consequence of holding that proposition. But what your mantra does is making exactly that claim. Which puts Young Earth Creationists and Liberal Quakers, Wahhabite fundamentalists and secularist Alevi all in the same basket. Which I believe is a counterproductive thing to do if you are interested in what the real world is actually like.

“which Y A-B would not be in a particularly good position to know; she’s a middle class East African Indian”

Yes, dsquared, she’s also a women. You can hardly trust what she has to say can you? Bourgeois, EAI and Female. We should listen to the nice rich men from the MCB instead.

If your argument is that she isn’t from the correct tiny demographic we can certainly ignore you, as you aren’t from it either. She is closer to it than you are though. And why are you trying to bring race and class into a debate about religion, anyway?

If your argument is that the existence of a single non-veil-wearing-at-the-moment Islamist refutes the argument that Islamists are pro-veil then surely the existence of a single anti-veil Muslim woman refutes the argument that Muslim women want to wear the veil.

In your logical universe a single black swan would leave the people of Cookham with nothing to do in July.

“The female members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Muslim Brotherhood don’t in general, wear veils”

They don’t generally talk too loudly about their plans for a caliphate either.

I’m sure this is also an illustration of principle rather than a media literacy that you would have to be racist to assume they cannot have.

Not as much as (some) Brits, especially (many) BBC presentes/reporters, who ought to know better. Next time the subject of antisocial behaviour is on the news, listen for the mention of lore and order. (You also get people observing lore, or so it seems when you hear the term ‘lore abiding’.) And, of course, do the police not force us to observe these traditions and teaching when they partake in lore enforcement? And that’s just (some of) the B bloody B bloody C, wot should know better.

I know, I know, that was the joke. snicker. Americans never do that – the joke is that they mispronounce it by saying ‘Victoria and Albert’ – which judging by how pervasive Victoriar and Albert is over there, must be a mispronunciation, right? And along with Laura Norder of course there’s Chiner and India, North Career and China, etc. Very much including the B bloody BC. It’s especially pathetic, I think, on the World Service, where one would think clarity would be a good idea.

Thanks for parenthetical some and many – Jeremy keeps trying to tell me that some and many are not necessary, and I keep explaining that he’s wrong.

O’course, some of us was brought up not knowing how to talk proper, on account of bein’ from Sarf Lundun. Hence my tendency, which I have, to my horror, passed on to my children, to say ‘littow’ and ‘bottow’, ‘bew’ and ‘wew’ [as in ‘wew I never, coo lor lumme luvaduck, stahn the crows it’s a right to-do an’ no mistake, guvn’r’.

Well, I talk all wrong too, on account of being from Amurika. I say nooz and dook and noo (I noo it was troo because the dook told me the nooz). I also say liddle and budder. I feel a liddle queasy. Fine words budder no parsnips. I also can’t bring myself to pronounce Trenton properly – I have to say it Tren’un, or feel intolerably affected. Same with tomado. And potado.

But when UKanians get snotty (or snoddy), then I mention the intrusive r, and they fall down and whimper.

Just looked at the comments. I wouldn’t say they were *nasty* as such. More obsessed with Islam to the exclusion of anything else. Oh and obsessed with SUNNI islam as well (hence the cracks about Ismailis).

I’m getting more understanding about how the Ismailis became the first Assassins- wouldn’t you after all that crap?